


Time-Out

by emothy



Category: Kamen Rider OOO
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-02
Updated: 2011-11-02
Packaged: 2017-10-25 15:44:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/271991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emothy/pseuds/emothy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/270062">cure for the itch</a>: future-fic, spoilers for the series, and lots of speculation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time-Out

**Author's Note:**

> We don't have a hell of a lot of characterization for Shingo, so I improvised a hell of a lot. But he's a cop so I figure that he can read people well, knows the right questions to ask (interrogate XD) ...Not to mention that I think having shared headspace with Ankh for roughly a year there would be little they couldn't say to each other at this point - there were no secrets back then! So hopefully I am justifying this enough <3

-

"Ankh..."

The voice is hesitant; soft so as not to startle him and send him away, but warm with the promise of someone who came purposely seeking him out. Ankh can admit the relief that it isn't Eiji or Hina. They are too close, while all those other people - Date and the others - were not nearly close enough.

Somehow Shingo was the closest of all in a completely different way. Ankh doesn't have actual human-like feelings for Shingo as he does Eiji or Hina, but he's familiar. There's an attachment. So much so that to Ankh it is just like letting an old acquaintance sit down on the bench beneath the tree he perches in.

"It's strange to have to talk directly to you," Shingo admits after a brief while, looking up. The smile on his face is only halfway to his eyes. "I'm so used to just thinking... knowing... feeling."

The shock on his face, the first time he'd seen Ankh materialise in front of him in person-

"You perceived yourself in a completely different way to how you look on the outside," Shingo says. He turns away because he knows he has caught Ankh's attention. "I saw purpose and intent, pure honesty. I saw elements of your true form. I was surprised you looked so much like me in the end."

"I didn't alter your body on purpose," Ankh says. The tone is almost sulky. "It was something to do with my incomplete essence attempting to complete itself by influencing your body."

"It's been strange getting used to life without you again," Shingo says. "When it happened briefly before I was too relieved to be back to worry about anything. But when it became permanent... I noticed your absence."

Ankh jumps out of the tree, landing on his feet with a thud in front of Shingo. The way he quirks his head, considering Shingo from all angles, is so avian. The way he clearly has no idea what to say to this only compounds his otherness.

Shingo simply waits to see what Ankh will do. And eventually he sits down on the bench beside Shingo.

The need for close proximity - is it a result of their lost bond?

"Nobody really wanted to talk about what happened," Shingo shrugs. "I remember most of it. Up until you..." He trails off. Saying it out loud would be a mistake. Ankh can remember better than anyone the way he gave up all of himself to allow Eiji to transform and save the world.

"Hmph," Ankh says, and turns himself sharply; a ninety degree angle away from Shingo's face and his piercing look; eyes that truly understand what it is to make an impossible sacrifice.

"What did you and Eiji do... when the void opened up?"

"It wasn't a void," Ankh shrugs. "Well, not solely, anyway. It was time. Everything and nothing, existing all at once."

"How did you return from that?"

"I adapted," Ankh smirks. "I learnt to navigate the time before it could envelope me. I had an advantage nobody else had - I hadn't already been destroyed. Kazari, I felt him disappear. Mezool, Gamel. Uva didn't, but he became the container and stopped being himself. His medals rearranged themselves into something alien. He couldn't put himself back together and escape the way I did. Even Maki, that... He stopped existing when he became the portal to time. Eiji and I made that happen."

"Eiji-kun said..." Shingo sucks in a breath. "He said he saw you, as he was falling to the Earth. Once the portal had disappeared, there were no powers left to help him. Gotou-kun, using the Birth suit, was able to fly and catch him."

"That idiot," Ankh says, but it's only a reflex. What else could Eiji have possibly done to save himself? And that was always the crux of the matter - Eiji never looked out for himself. Only everyone else.

"What did he see, Ankh?"

"I don't know!" Ankh barks, hackles visibly rising. "I wasn't there! Eiji probably saw whatever he wanted to see. Don't you humans have enough crazy theories about facing death?"

"I've risked death many times," Shingo says quietly, but firmly. "It's part of my job. I think you're not telling me everything, and this time I can't just search around in your mind for the answers because there are no walls between us. This time you need to tell me."

"I don't need to tell you anything," Ankh says, but still he sits there.

Perhaps he has missed the connection as much as Shingo has carried the absence.

"You need to tell me how you're possessing my body again," Shingo insists. "Or did you find a way to hold form after all? How many core medals did you retrieve from the void? Do you still have your powers? Can you make yummies? Are you a threat, Ankh? What do you want?"

"Who are you to ask me any of this?" Ankh asks, jumping up. Flames dance up in his palm, but Shingo refuses to flinch.

"Who better?" He retorts. "So you have your powers still. That makes you a danger to everyone."

"I have everything I had before!" Ankh snarls. "I had my pick of times - they all existed! But I needed to learn to navigate... I only had my arm, I had to recover my cores first... There were reasons I ended up at the exact moment I abandoned your body for the last time."

Shingo folds his hands in his lap and says nothing

"I took your body, and your consciousness with it," Ankh says. "But your consciousness couldn't survive alongside mine in the void. I posessed your body again, and that preserved it. I never posessed your conscious, only your body's senses."

"You took my body back into the void," Shingo says flatly.

"It was a different time," Ankh says. "You had already survived. I had already disappeared. I wouldn't have done it if-"

He cuts himself off before he can say something completely uncharacteristic. Shingo already knows what it is, however. He smiles.

"I know," Shingo offers. "I remember you preparing for the end. If you thought we would just go back to the same shared existence all over again... Ankh, I don't think you would've wanted that for yourself, let alone me. Your motives would have still been selfish."

Perhaps Shingo doesn't think that is entiely the truth, but it isn't a lie either. And it seems to settle Ankh much more effectively to believe in the bad he is capable of rather than the good.

"Then I had to realign with the body," Ankh murmurs. A perverse need to finish the story to its completion. "It took me time, though it felt like nothing... A year has passed, hasn't it?"

"More or less," Shingo agrees. "I was just about getting used to you not being in my mind anymore. Or being my mind, with me on the fringes of it. And now this. Why did you come here, to this time, Ankh?"

He knows the answer, but Ankh needs to say it out loud. He needs to confront it.

It comes out, mumbled, reluctant; almost lost on the wind, but not quite. Shingo hears it:

"...I came back as soon as I could."

-


End file.
